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Meet The Austin City Manager Candidates

Austin City Hall
Callie Hernandez for KUT
Austin City Hall

The Austin City Council is scheduled to decide today who will fill the highest ranking unelected position at city hall. Spencer Cronk and Howard Lazarus are the two remaining candidates for city manager.

Cronk has been the Minneapolis city administrator since 2014. Before that, he worked for New York City's Department of Small Business Services.

Lazarus ran Austin’s Public Works Department for nearly eight years. He left Austin last year to become the city administrator in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Both men appeared at a town-hall meeting last week to answer questions in front of an audience. Here were three of the big questions they faced: 

What will your first 30 days look like?

What is your commitment to working with the community to end systemic racism in Austin?

How would you deal with the affordability crisis that we're facing in Austin?

Austin has been without a permanent city manager since Marc Ott left last year. The city’s chief financial officer, Elaine Hart, has been serving in the role on an interim basis.

Council members will meet privately beginning at 2 p.m. today. They’ll then vote publicly on which candidate to hire.

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